Claiming that granting a “tax holiday” for her company (and other large multinationals) would be beneficial to the United States, Oracle President Safra Catz said that such a holiday would allow earnings sitting in idle accounts abroad to be “repatriated” and freed up for better use here in the United States. “It’s an absolute no-brainer,” she said. If the money flows back to the United States, “it will create jobs.” If it stays where it is, it will wind up “funding everybody else’s economies and banks.”

Food prices are rising quickly around the world. Part of the problem is weather. The winter wheat crop in China has been poor. Australia has suffered floods, while Russia has undergone a drought. The earthquake and tsunami in Japan, no doubt, will hammer the very intensive agricultural production of the limited arable land on that archipelago.

While the mainstream media have jumped at the opportunity to report on possible nuclear meltdowns in Japan, alerting Americans on the west coast to beware potential radiation (and are also likely to use the opportunity to push an anti-nuclear energy agenda), they have wholly ignored the more critical impending meltdown: that of the Japanese bond market, which would have a severe impact on the American market.

If it sometimes feels like almost everyone is on the government dole except you, there may be a reason for that sensation: According to a recent study one-third of all income in the United States comes in various forms of “social welfare benefits.”

According to the Congressional Budget Office, attempts by Senate Democrats to cut spending have been feeble and at times, misleading. Analysts at the CBO have determined that the Senate Democrats’ plan for deficit reduction shows far less savings than that proposed by House Republicans.